India stampede police suspended

NEW DELHI – Twenty-one police and government officials have been suspended over a stampede near a temple that killed 115 people, as recriminations flew over India’s latest religious festival disaster, police said Tuesday.

Devotees were crushed to death or drowned Sunday near the temple in the central state of Madhya Pradesh, the site of another deadly stampede just seven years earlier. Survivors of the tragedy, which broke out on a bridge, recounted how desperate mothers threw their children into the water below, as authorities came under fire over policing levels following claims the panic was aggravated by baton-charging.